A journalism student and her boyfriend travel to a remote Patagonia island in Chile, digging into the unsettling link between local mythology and a disturbing amount of sex crimes. Well, they tell ya to never go searching for the Devil because sometimes the Devil finds you. The island of Chiloé has a dark history, which Matias believes will be great to make a little found footage horror film around while Paula researches and conducts interviews with locals who have some creepy-ass stories to tell. The main legend concerns an incubus-like entity called the Trauco living in the forest, having its way with women and murdering men. The governor preaches a message of progress and industry on the island but the natives have a much less optimistic worldview. Rightfully so, the folks in power are definitely exploiting them. Paula is trying to unearth the correlation between these legends and the hard fact that crimes of a sexual nature account for 70% of all crime on the island when she’s not acting exactly like the college student she is and being the kind of confrontational that ends interviews early. On top of sabotaging her own interviews, Paula is having strange dreams (the early warning sign of incubus possession) and speaking in tongues in her sleep. Brujos, Goatmen and even Cthulhu itself get a mention and tie-in to the sinister shit playing out in the forests. After an encounter with a group of musicians leads to Paula being marked with paint and having shit thrown on her, the duo decide to leave the next day and head back to the relative safety of the state capital. Of course, Matias wants to make one last stop before getting the hell out of the area and that place is the Enotuco forest where they have been told they can encounter the Trauco. Poor kids. I’ll wager this doesn’t go well. My trepidation is substantiated when they decide to spend the night in a forest-adjacent cabin. Night falls, Paula wanders out into the woods, Matias follows and the inevitable happens. Matias is a film fan which leads to some annoyance and chatter about movies but it’s not as bad as I’ve seen it get elsewhere. Sure the two make some poor choices, but there wouldn’t be much of a movie if they thought things out and made educated decisions. Authentic locations and folklore make it work a lot better than a bunch of found footage I’ve sat through (especially on Tubi) and the characters have their problems but they ain’t so bad. Worth a watch.
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